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Bella - "colour popped"

I'm taking a camera class and our homework for this week is to "colour pop" a picture - selecting some of the picture to be in colour while the rest is black and white. This is Bella in black and white with her red tag, hope you like it

I would really love to do the colour pop, but I have absolutely no idea how it's done. I have Photoshop and an idiots guide on how to use it, but I can't find any where in the book on how to do it! My brother tried explaining it to me, but it went way over my head! I know you need two layers of the photo, but every time I try it, both layers change

that is so cool. i'm really inept when it comes to photography. i have way too many options on the camera i got for christmas 2 yrs ago. i think i have moved it off the basic settings one time - and that was an accident! it's a wonder i get any decent pics at all!!
kudos to you for branching out!!

I would really love to do the colour pop, but I have absolutely no idea how it's done. I have Photoshop and an idiots guide on how to use it, but I can't find any where in the book on how to do it! My brother tried explaining it to me, but it went way over my head! I know you need two layers of the photo, but every time I try it, both layers change

Do you have a really simple guide on how to do it please?

Hi Rosiesmum,

It's fairly simple to do. Make the selection of the area you want to keep in colour with the polygon selection tool. Then inverse the selection - this selects the rest of the photo, the bit you want to make black and white. Go to the hue/saturation palette and make the saturation 0. Then inverse the selection again, this will select the part of the photo that is still in colour. You can leave this as it is or play around with the settings to make the colour stand out more. I hope that makes some sense to you but pm me if you want a more detailed explanation

I tried to follow your instructions but got lost!!!! (I'm not too good the first time I try something, but once I get the hang of it, I have no problems after that)

Anyway, I managed to do this somehow - it's not quite the same as the background is more sepia than black and white:

I do have a couple of other photo editing software programs which are easier to use, so I'll try them.

Edit: Just used GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program - which is an opensource program and is totally free and can be used for Windows and Linux). It's so much easier to use and your instructions were much clearer. I haven't posted the picture because my hand was a bit shaky and the end results were not as good! But, practice makes perfect.

Thanks for your help

Last edited by rosiesmum; 7th June 2009 at 04:12 PM.
Reason: used a different software program